Category: The Citizen

Dar es Salaam. Vodacom Tanzania has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute (JKCI) to expand access to paediatric heart care.

The agreement was signed by the telcom firm through its charity arm Vodacom Foundation Tanzania, and the Heart Team Africa Foundation, a specialised foundation under the JKCI. The two organisations described the initiative as a milestone in the fight against paediatric heart disease in Tanzania.

The signing ceremony at JKCI coincided with World Heart Day 2025, held under the theme “Don’t Miss a Beat”, a global call to prioritise heart health through early detection and lifestyle change. Under the MoU, Vodacom Tanzania Foundation will be contributing some cost in providing paediatric cardiac heart care.

According to a recent study conducted by Muhimbili National Hospital in Tanzania, an estimated two out of every 100 children are born with congenital heart disease (CHD), and three percent of children aged 515 suffer from rheumatic heart disease (RHD), a preventable condition caused by untreated throat infections. Each year, more than 4,000 children require surgery, according to the study, yet access to care remains limited.

Although the Government subsidizes 70 percent of costs, the remaining 30 percent is still unaffordable for many families in dire need. JKCI currently has over 350 children on its waiting list for surgery.

Speaking on the gravity of the issue, JKCI executive director, Dr Peter Kisenge, emphasised the urgency. “Behind every statistic is a child with dreams and parents with hope.

This partnership will help us close the gap between need and access, ensuring that more children live to see a healthy future,” he said. Heart Team Africa Foundation chief executive officer and paediatric cardiologist, Dr Naizihijwa Majani, said the cost of treatment can stand between a child and their future.

“This partnership with Vodacom and JKCI is more than financial support; it is a lifeline. Together, we are building a Tanzania where no parent has to choose between poverty and their child’s heartbeat,” he said.

Earlier this year, Vodacom Tanzania Foundation launched the Amini Initiative in Zanzibar, pledging to sponsor 150 children by covering the remaining 30 percent of treatment costs. So far, 38 children, ranging from two months to 14 years old, have already received successful surgeries.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Vodacom Tanzania chief executive officer, Mr Philip Besiimire, said the MoU is about turning belief into action through the Amini Initiative. “Together with JKCI, we are opening the door to a future where no child’s life is cut short due to lack of access to life-changing medical interventions, but instead given the chance to heal, to hope, and to thrive,” he said.

Vodacom Tanzania Foundation, JKCI, and Heart Team Africa Foundation are calling on partners, donors, and stakeholders to join forces in the lifesaving mission. .

In education as a whole, strategy plays an unimaginably significant role. This entails strategy not only in teaching but also in the entire process of adjudging the needs, discerning educational topics and materials, in the delivery process, and in the receiving process on the side of learners.

The educational cycle feeds itself and builds on the work done in the preceding cycle. The educational needs are the societal problems, the gaps needing solution; yet to attain these, a certain amount of groundwork is needed as a foundation; hence, we have curricula to guide the whole formal process.

The delivery of knowledge to learners is not the final stage of the process, nor are the grades the learners get. After learning, there is assessment, constructive feedback, reflection, application (in context), and adaptation of the content and the preparation process.

Educationists call this the teaching and learning cycle. Despising an appropriate strategy in any of these sections irreparably affects the productivity of the whole chain, regardless of the quality of work or output in the unaffected sections of the chain.

As such, we can say that education is, by its very form, content, and function, ‘a chain reaction’, contingent on the indispensable interdependence of all players in the process. For most learners, being educated at school is about memorising.

Why? Because that is how the system orients them to see education. Most learners view schooling as a reward system and themselves as heroes, depending on how high up the reward ladder they are ranked.

One is not considered smart, creative, or intelligent unless the grading system says so! All creativity and innovativeness have to be shrunk to fit into the demands of the spoon-feeding system, which, unfortunately, kills many dreams and talents. The question is whether learners are taught how to learn.

We cannot just presume that people, especially young people, know how to learn academically. Learning goes beyond reading and understanding books.

Learning is a process of integration, like putting together puzzle pieces until the whole picture makes sense. True learning sparks curiosity and stimulates the desire to keep exploring.

This is only possible if learners are helped to first discover their areas of interest, not just their areas of performance. A child may perform better in a subject they have no interest in simply because they like the teacher, but that interest evaporates when the teacher is changed.

The most outstanding ground for one’s interest is what they naturally feel curious about. There is no harm in exposing them to many options before making them express freely what they like to engage in, mostly in academics.

A learning process that does not involve the learner’s consent and feelings has a higher chance of achieving little or nothing by either producing uninterested experts who only do their jobs to earn a living, as what they do was never their passion. Teaching children how to learn helps them identify their interests and preferred learning styles, enabling them to become the best versions of themselves.

If the goal of education is to make people the best versions of themselves, then these considerations are of paramount importance. It is equally important to consider that times have changed, even if much of what is taught remains the same.

Worth considering is the fact that globally, the education system is handling young people who have a very different exposure, given the facility of technology, demographics, labour market demands and dynamics, and the fast-paced globalisation, among others. These factors affect the way they view education and its entire process, and even the questions they ask are different compared to questions asked by learners of the same levels 30 years ago.

The sooner we come to terms with this fact and are considerate of their worldview, the better chance we have of making education functionally relevant to them. The education system should be a means of transformation, not just a pipeline where people pass through with changed credentials yet remain untransformed.

In Tanzania, where 77 per cent of the population (about 47.5 million people) is under 35, education is the best legacy we can give them and the next generations, especially considering that the majority of the nationals are marginally represented in the national policy-making roundtables. This group is by far a ‘surviving’ group, with most of them not having life figured out due to unemployment and other systemic shortcomings beyond their control.

It is a testimony to poor planning, given that statistics obtained every year could have been used for comprehensive predictions and plans in anticipation of the problems we have now. If this had been done, we would be much further than we are, as we have a surplus of workforce in the young people of this nation.

To improve the quality of our education, we need well-articulated strategies which prioritise the role of learners, not just instructors. Shimbo Pastory is an advocate for positive social transformation and a student of the Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines.

Website: “underlinewww.shimbopastory.

com .

Nairobi. Aisha used to lose nearly half of her tomatoes within three days.

Heat, rough handling, and slow market demand turned fresh produce into waste. Today, she pays a small weekly fee for space in a solar-powered cold room just two kilometres from her market in Vihiga County.

The same tomatoes now last up to three weeks. “Before the cold room, I would wake up worried that half my tomatoes would rot before I found a buyer,” she said.

“Now I can keep them for weeks, and that means I decide when to sell, not the heat.” Her experience reflects a wider shift in how farmers and traders across Africa are handling perishable goods.

Distributed, renewable-powered cold storage is transforming refrigeration from a luxury into basic infrastructure, stabilising food systems and making agricultural value chains investable. “The fee is small, but the peace of mind is big,” Aisha said.

“Now every crate feels like it counts.” Tackling post-harvest loss Post-harvest loss continues to shape the economics of African agriculture.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that up to 40 percent of some fresh crops never make it from field to plate, with fruit and vegetables hit hardest. The African Post-Harvest Losses Information System puts the figure between 10 and 12 percent, while the World Bank estimates that up to 40 percent of horticultural produce never reaches the market.

Empower Africa calculates that only about 5 per cent of fresh produce currently passes through a cold chain, contributing to losses of 3050 percent. Losses fall sharply when refrigeration enters the chain.

Solar walk-in cold rooms are prefabricated, insulated units fitted with panels and hybrid power backups. Operators offer booking systems, SMS receipts, and remote monitoring to ensure consistent uptime.

Business models vary, with some kiosks renting space per crate or per day. “For me, paying per crate makes sense,” Aisha explained.

“Some weeks I have few baskets, other weeks more. I only pay for what I use.

If I sell fast, I don’t pay. If I need more time, I add a small fee.

That choice is everything for a small farmer like me.” Innovation and investment In Kenya, SokoFresh runs solar-powered cold storage on a service basis for more than 7,000 farmers.

In Nigeria, Baridi applies the same approach to the meat trade, leasing space to butcheries. Mid-sized players are offering subscription lockers for cooperatives and deploying refrigerated trucks for aggregation.

Larger facilities serve exporters and processors with bonded warehouses and logistics services. “Cold rooms are revenue-generating assets with measurable climate benefits.

That combination is why funds like ours are stepping in,” said Simon Enyadong, regional investment lead at ColdBox, the start-up renting cold storage in Aisha’s area. Investment is flowing into the sector.

Local operators are raising capital to expand product lines, while asset managers and climate funds are structuring debt to finance large-scale facilities. One notable example is Koolboks, a Nigeria- and France-based company that raised $11 million in Series A funding in September 2025. Since its founding in 2018, the start-up has deployed more than 10,000 solar-powered freezers in 25 countries, offering pay-as-you-go financing and IoT monitoring for retailers and clinics.

“The raise allows us to deepen our reach, build locally, and put power back in the hands of small businesses,” said CEO and co-founder Ayoola Dominic. By localising assembly in Nigeria, Koolboks expects to cut end-user prices by up to 20 per cent.

Kenya’s InspiraFarms has followed a similar trajectory, securing $1.09 million in 2024 to expand its off-grid cold storage projects in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Ghana. ColdHubs in Nigeria has developed a network of solar-powered walk-in cold rooms that have saved millions of kilogrammes of produce from perishing annually.

In Uganda, an 8,000-pallet cold-storage warehouse is being constructed at Namanve Industrial Park in Kampala. The project, backed by $18 million from the Africa Go Green Fund, is being developed under the ARCH Cold Chain Solutions East Africa Fund.

It will serve agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and retail, and is projected to avoid more than 300,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year. “This financing enables us to build a high-quality cold storage and logistics system,” said Suki Muia, a director at Cold Solutions Kazi and ARCH Investment.

Laurane Aigrain, managing director of Africa Go Green, added that the facility will strengthen infrastructure and help Uganda manage food supplies and healthcare logistics year-round. The regional market is expanding rapidly.

Market Data Forecast projects that the Middle East and Africa cold chain market will grow from $23.8 billion in 2022 to $35.1 billion by 2028. Local companies assembling solar fridges and modular cold-room components are creating jobs, cutting costs, and improving maintenance turnaround times. Across the board, the model is reshaping incentives: less waste for farmers, longer shelf life for traders, and new revenue streams for investors.

“We can feed one billion more people globally if we solve post-harvest losses,” said Owusu Akoto, CEO of FreezeLink, speaking at the Africa Food Bank Conference. “By increasing the shelf life of products and preventing food waste, Africa can not only fight food insecurity but also open new markets for exports,” added Rwandan entrepreneur Rob Nashihanya.

For Aisha, the benefits are clear and personal. “It’s not just tomatoes anymore,” she said.

“It’s knowing I won’t go home empty-handed.” (bird story agency) .